A costly activity for grocery stores, convenience stores, drug stores, and other retail businesses is the restocking of merchandise on display shelves, the resetting of shelves, and merchandise rotation; i.e. the placing of newer merchandise behind older merchandise. Unlike warehousing and distribution activities where product is handled in pallet and case quantities, stocking retail shelves often involves placing individual units of a product or item or article on shelves. Thus, the rate at which product can be restocked or rotated per merchandising hour is limited by how quickly a human stocker can place individual items on the shelves.
Similarly, a costly activity for Direct Store Delivery (DSD) companies also is the restocking and resetting of shelves. In these situations, there is an added productivity constraint in that DSD merchandisers are largely unsupervised and can be less diligent. Accordingly, the rate at which shelves are restocked and reset can be even lower in DSD situations. One specific DSD industry involves the delivery and stocking of soft drinks. Soft drink packaging varies from individual cans to PET bottles of numerous sizes including 16 and 20 ounce, 2-liter, and ½ liter 6-packs. Shelving configurations vary from single serve presentation in coolers, cold vaults, and vending machines to multipacs on grocery shelves and end-caps. Such variation in package and shelving configurations adds even more complexity to the merchandising of such items, and therefore limits further the productivity of people stocking and resetting shelves.
A need exists for a system and method that improve upon the inefficiencies mentioned above and others. More specifically, a need exists for tools usable by those who restock and rotate merchandise on store shelves to increase significantly the speed and efficiency of these activities. It is to the provision of such a system and methodologies that the present invention is primarily directed.